My talk with Gallagher at CTIA Spring 2011

by Mark R

You’ll never know who you will meet at CTIA, and I heard that Gallagher would be in attendance, and I got some time to sit down with him during one of Sprint’s presentations.

It isn’t every day that you meet one of the top comedians of all time, and I had a mental list of questions that I wanted like to ask him. I expected Gallagher to act atrocious and treat our conversation like a big joke. This is the man who practically made a career out of the “Sledge-O-Matic”.

However, Gallagher didn’t give me the Robin Williams treatment. Since he likes to talk, I felt no reason to interrupt him and listened. I had no idea that he was once a chemistry major, and he has some interesting ideas on how to change technology. I thought that Gallagher was some celebrity guest of a big company, but he was apparently at CTIA as an attendant. His name tag read “The Great Gallagher”, and I have no idea how he got that. Usually convention nametags only print your full name, but Gallagher is one of those people that can drop either their first or last name.

Gallagher has some pretty interesting ideas on how to change the gambling industry. He also stated that a lot of big companies as well as the average consumer has no idea how cell phones work. I have to include myself in this category, and I believe that Gallagher was implying that we as a society are getting more demanding when it comes to technology but becoming dumber as how it comes about. He also was a little upset about the lack of development of the space program.

In short, don’t believe what you see about Gallagher on stage. He is quite an intelligent man, and I look forward to seeing him doing his part to change technology.